Chart of the Week - Introduction

HSXsanity has been on hiatus for a while, mostly because I ran out of simple HSX questions to answer. It's time to try something new, and starting this week I'll be road-testing a new feature - charts that compare the box office for movies currently in theatres against some comparable movies.

There are a few different ways to compare box office over the time between opening weekend and delist - comparing the actual box office numbers, comparing delist multipliers, or comparing the daily or weekly percentage changes - but I have decided to compare the cumulative box office as a percentage of the adjust price.  I've chosen this method because it allows comparisons of movies that have different adjust multipliers, and it results in charts that are easy to follow.

I'll be calculating the adjust price with the multiplier used by HSX at the time of adjust, as follows:

• for movies released after January 2009 - normal weekends have a multiplier of 2.7 * Fri-Sun (+ Previous if appropriate), holiday weekends of 2.2 * Fri-Mon, Thanksgiving of 2.0 * Wed-Sun and limiteds expanding into wide of Previous + 3.0 * Fri-Sun.  Most movies used as comparisons will fall in this group; 
• for movies released between September 2004 and December 2008 - normal weekends use the 2.8 multiplier (+ Previous if appropriate), holiday weekends of 2.4 * Fri-Mon, Thanksgiving of 2.3 * Wed-Sun;
• for movies released before September 2004 - - normal weekends use the 2.9 multiplier (+ Previous if appropriate), holiday weekends of 2.5 * Fri-Mon, Thanksgiving of 2.3 * Wed-Sun.

Also, I'll be calculating adjust prices using the actual box office rather than the weekend estimates.  This is because tracking both estimates and actuals seems like unnecessary duplication, though it also means the adjust prices used in these charts will differ from the HSX adjust price.

The charts I'll publish in the weeks to come will focus on the movies I think will have the most interest to casual traders - so movies that have had a big opening weekend, movies that look like having longer than usual legs and movies with an unusual box office performance.  If there's a particular movie you'd like to see represented in a chart, leave a comment here or a reply when they are posted in the Players & Strategy Board.